


my heart wants to keep seeing you

by newseptembers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 4+ 1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Matriarchal Alderaan, Prince Ben Solo, Pseudo American Star Wars Setting, author wants to apologise to star wars canon, every cliche in the book, oh no the press thinks we're dating what do
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 16:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19833967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newseptembers/pseuds/newseptembers
Summary: Rey doesn't so much realise who's standing in front of her as is violently thrown into an ice-cold pool of awareness. She just asked — no, demanded — that Ben Organa, Crown Prince of Alderaan, grab her a packet of candy that probably contains more processed sugar than he's ever seen in his entire life, judging by the look of him.Poe willneverlet her live this down.— OR: The four times Rey meets the Crown Prince of Alderaan in public, and the one time she meets Ben Organa in private.





	my heart wants to keep seeing you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlestarfighter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlestarfighter/gifts).



> happy birthday maria!! you're such a joy to know and to call a friend and i hope you have the best day ever <3 please accept this bastardisation of your meeting with prince haakon (norway sweetie im so sorry)
> 
> title is from _white love_ by monsta x, and updates should come roughly once a week!

> **_Alderaan Celebrity_** @ _ANewsCeleb_
> 
> _New royal couple alert? Crown Prince Benjamin Organa, 32, cosies up to mystery brunette at Aldera CineHolo. But who is #BensGirl? pic.twitter.com/ds4bsH3E_

“Can you reach that for me?” Rey asks, not quite paying attention to the man next to her. All that registers is his height — he must have half a foot on her, easy, and that makes him a prime candidate for her mission. She’s been looking forward to seeing the next movie in the Galaxy Clash series for months, scrimped and saved up to justify a ticket to the midnight premiere, and no cinema experience is complete without a pack of jogan fruit flavoured candies. 

She’d ask Poe to help, but he honestly doesn’t have that many inches on her, and she wouldn’t put it past him to try something ridiculous like a running leap and end up bringing the whole display down. Finn and Rose are useless, too wrapped up in one another and their popcorn combo deal to even take note of Rey’s struggle, and besides, the stranger is right _there._ He’s got to be over six feet tall, and it won’t be a struggle for him to reach up ( _he won’t even have to stretch,_ she thinks) and grab a bag of Rey’s cinema staple.

Theoretically, she could sit through the showing without her snacks, but the thought of coughing up an absurd number of credits for a ticket and then having to make do with no sustenance but the paltry offerings of candy Poe spares makes her break out in hives. No food is not a good thing in Rey’s book, even somewhere as overpriced as the movie theater. 

She gestures towards the shelf aimlessly, hoping the stranger understands that choosiness isn’t a necessity and that time is of the essence. Turning to face him, she opens her mouth to offer a preemptive thanks and, for the first time, really registers just how big he is.

Because that’s the thing. Rey has managed to not only pick the tallest man in her vicinity but also, apparently, the largest. The realisation that men who are the height of giants, who look like they could quite easily lift the entire jogan fruit display without breaking a sweat, exist not only in real life but magically materialise at the exact time she’s in need is something she’d thought was reserved for her wildest daydreams. 

He’s practically casting his own orbit, that’s how big he is. Adjusting her first estimate, she realises that six feet was a conservative guess. Rey is tall herself — she’s well above average height for an Alderaanian woman, and were it not for some overzealous product facing, she would have retrieved her bounty on her own with no problem, but there’s tall, and then there’s _him._ It isn’t just the height, either. The stranger is broad-shouldered and thick-armed, and he casts a long shadow over her in the fluorescent lights of the concessions stand. 

His shoulders are… ridiculous. There’s no way he does anything for a living besides standing round in artfully draped coats, having words thrown at him like “ _colossal_ ” and " _ginormous._ ” A man with a wingspan like that belongs in some kind of museum for genetically superior beings, not in the crowded lobby of Rey’s local CineHolo. Really, it’s laughable that he’s real at all, and not one of the cardboard cut-outs advertising the next big superhero movie come to life. 

His dark hair waves artfully across a high forehead, and his strong features are thrown into sharp relief by the contrast of his pale skin next to the black of his shirt. He’s good-looking, yes — moles scattered across the planes of his face, an aquiline nose and plush, full lips — but more than that, he looks _familiar._

Rey doesn’t so much gradually realise who’s standing in front of her as is violently thrown into an ice-cold pool of awareness. She just asked — no, demanded — that Ben Organa, Crown Prince of Alderaan, grab her a packet of candy that probably contains more processed sugar than he’s ever eaten in one sitting, judging by the look of him. 

She screws her eyes shut and counts to five, praying that when she opens them, she’ll realise that she was struck with a temporary case of face-blindness and this is just her mind playing tricks on her. 

No such luck. She didn’t even say _please_ , is the worst part. Asking a prince for help reaching something is one thing, especially when said prince is roughly the same height as an adolescent oak tree, but surely being impolite about it is a one way ticket to being unceremoniously barred from ever coming within one hundred feet of any member of the royal family every again. 

Poe will _never_ let her live this down. 

Maybe she’s wrong? Surely the heir to the throne can’t just turn up at the cinema and abandon his duties, whatever they may be. And Prince Ben has never really seemed like a Galaxy Clash fan to her; maybe it’s the whole royal situation, but he’s always struck her as a bit more highbrow. Pretentious, she would say, if she were being uncharitable. 

But the resemblance _is_ uncanny. If this is truly some random bystander, he’d make a fortune as an impersonator. People would pay great money for a doppelganger of Alderaan’s Son to show up at their birthday parties, their graduation ceremonies, even their weddings, probably. She knows Poe definitely would. 

And don’t they say that there are seven people in the world who look like you? It can’t be beyond the pale that, somewhere, there’s a man with Ben Organa’s face. It just feels impossible that they live in the same town. 

“Here,” the stranger says, thrusting the neon pink bag at her. It looks tiny in his hands, which bear a stronger resemblance to snow shovels than actual human appendages. It’s unthinkable, really, that there could be more than one man walking around Rey’s town looking like _that_. 

She’s still hoping against hope that she’s wrong, that it’s a case of mistaken identity and she’s not inadvertently committed treason, when she notices the heavy signet ring on his left pinky finger. Fuck. She knows that ring. Everyone does. It’s the ring that carved into the face of James Snoke when Ben punched him squarely in the face at a state banquet. The photos were everywhere after that night, the disgraced advisor with a bloody welt spread across his cheekbone, a black eye already forming, and the Prince with a strip of cloth wrapped around swollen knuckles, the fabric already blooming red. 

There’s coincidence, and then there’s an unknown identical twin wandering around Aldera, one who has an exact copy of the Prince’s one of a kind ring — and an exact copy of his face. 

Resigning herself to her fate, Rey forces herself to look up and meet him in the eye. Maybe he’ll be merciful, and instead of beheading or disemboweling or whatever it is they do to traitors nowadays, she’ll get off with a stint in the Tower. 

He looks big in pictures — judging by their comparative heights, the Queen must barely scrape five foot tall — but she didn’t realise how overwhelming it would be to be hit with the full force of his presence. It isn’t just the sheer size of him, but some kind of magnetic quality she hadn’t expected. It’s like being slowly reeled in on a hook, unable to resist the urge to avert her eyes. She hadn’t been prepared.

Not that you can ever really be prepared to meet your future King in the lobby of your local cinema.

She means to say thank you, to apologise for her rudeness and then to very gracefully bow out of the conversation, turn tail, and run back to Poe, but what comes out is… decidedly not that.

“You’re Prince Ben.”

She wants to slap herself as soon as the words escape her. This was _not_ part of the plan. What happened to beating a hasty retreat? Instead, she’s doubled down on the rudeness. Alderaan’s monarchy is not a restrictive one, and the Royal Family lead fairly normal lives (or as normal as can be, when you’re the ruler and heir of a small country, respectively) so it isn’t uncommon to see them out and about. Usually, however, there’s a certain sense of propriety observed, an unspoken agreement between members of the public and the security detail that all plebeians will stay at least ten feet away at all times. 

They most definitely do not demand that the Crown Prince grab them candy, and then draw an entire cinema’s worth of people to his incognito appearance. 

“I’m sorry,” the Prince says, with a studied air of deliberate confusion. “You must be mistaken.”

So that’s how he wants to play it. Rey can deal with this. Never mind that now he’s spoken, she’s lost any doubt — everything about him gives it away: his measured tone, the designer coat, the practised air of disdain that imbues every atom of his being, from the way he looks down his nose at her to how his words drip with condescension masked as politeness. She was fully prepared to walk away, to go back to Poe, Finn, and Rose and whisper about her passing encounter with the heir to the throne while the previews were playing, but now there’s no way she’s letting this go. 

“Come on,” she says, grabbing the bag of candy from where it hangs from the tips of his outstretched fingers, as though it’s too unhealthy to even touch. “You’re not being very subtle.”

“I can assure you,” the Prince starts, his brow furrowing, “You’re confusing me with someone else.”

Rey huffs out a laugh, the jogan fruit forgotten by her side as she steps nearer, so they’re nearly nose to nose. Up close, she can see that his eyes aren’t the dark brown they appear in photos, but instead flecked through with streaks of gold and bronze, unfairly striking even in the harsh cinema lighting.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but _this…_ ” she breaks off to gesticulate broadly at him, trying to encompass his height and his presence and his clearly expensive clothes in one fell swoop. There’s so little space between them that the back of her hand brushes the buttons of his shirt, and she feels the heat of his skin even through the cotton, like an electric shock. “... is not inconspicuous.”

Ben’s noticeable enough alone, but the lumbering appearance of a man who seems to be Bigfoot’s lost sibling, right down to the masses of hair, causes Rey’s voice to die in her throat. His footsteps reverberate across the cheap vinyl floor, and he draws to a halt just behind the Prince, looming down at her with one hand resting low on his belt.

He has to be security. No one else would be wearing a full suit and tie — complete with sunglasses — inside the cinema; even Ben is wearing a casual button down and jeans. The man shifts his weight and Rey tilts her head up, up, up to meet his gaze (or where she estimates is right) and realises that the Queen must walk around with a permanent crick in her neck, surrounded as she is by her giant of a son and their ridiculous bodyguards. 

His voice rises like a rumble that she can feel in the pit of her stomach, and he bends at the knee, drawing closer to the Prince so he can whisper something in his ear. Probably, she thinks, about how Ben would be entirely justified to have her locked up for daring to question the word of a royal. 

Recklessness makes her brave and she sets her jaw, nodding to the security detail like he’s a neighbour she’s passing on the street. 

“Is this your bodyguard, then?”

Ben actually smiles at that, as though he can’t help but be amused. She hadn’t realised before, but his teeth are crooked, the bottom row slightly misaligned. You can’t tell from the photos — not that pictures of him where he’s actually happy are common. He’s usually photographed scowling, or at least stone-faced, but maybe that’s why. It’s endearing, almost, that his smile is imperfect. It makes him seem more human. 

“I’ll have you know Chewbacca is a very dear friend of mine,” he replies, and it’s impossible to miss the warmth infusing his voice. He’s _laughing_ at her. 

“And not part of your security?” she challenges. It’s a point of pride now, to get him to admit who he is. Otherwise, there’s no way anyone will believe her when she tells this story later, six shots deep at the bar. 

“Well,” Ben replies, fully grinning now. She wants to smack the smugness off his face, never mind that that really _would_ get her arrested. “His defensive capabilities are not to be discounted.”

Chewbacca growls in approval behind him, and Rey narrows her eyes. She hates being made fun of, and her fist closes hard round her candy, the plastic crinkling in protest. She’s gearing up to really do something she’ll regret when another member of the royal entourage comes bustling up, a thin man with a shell of lacquered-down orange hair and a pencil thin moustache which she thinks is meant to make him look older. In fact, he just looks like a caricature of a movie villain. 

How many people does one Prince need to accompany him everywhere? He’s a fully grown man, nine years older than Rey, and she manages just fine on her own. He probably has a different member of staff for every aspect of the cinema process: one to buy his ticket, one to warm his seat, one to grab popcorn refills whenever he demands. It must be nice.

The orange man stretches up to murmur something in Chewbacca’s ear, and Rey would be offended at their rudeness, but she figures that she’s not got a leg to stand on in that department. The two men leave for the back of the lobby, obviously not deeming her a threat, and Ben turns back to her, the full force of his attention crashing over her like a wave.

“Who’s that then?” she asks, curiosity overtaking pique, and she jerks her head towards Pencil ‘Stache’s retreating back. “Some Lord I should have heard of?”

“Ah,” Ben replies, suddenly rueful. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand, and she can’t but trace the movement, her eyes tracking the shift of muscle in his arm. “No. That’s my assistant.”

It feels unkind, to laugh, but that doesn’t stop the giggle that bursts out of her. His cheeks flush pink in response, streaks of colour up high on each cheekbone, and she can see through the gaps in his hair that his ears are burning red. 

“You brought your assistant to the cinema?”

Just like that, the tension is broken. It’s hard to feel any animosity to someone whose only companions are people who work for him, royalty or not. 

“I’ll have you know that Armitage is a Galaxy Clash superfan,” Ben says, faux-sanctimonious. “He practically begged to tag along.”

“And it’s not because you pay him?” she asks, one eyebrow arched. She didn’t expect him to be _funny_ , but he is, a dry humour that makes her second guess everything he says, not sure at first whether he’s joking or serious. 

“That might have come into play.”

She huffs out a laugh, and watches half removed as his hair stirs at the whisper of her breath. They’re still standing toe-to-toe, tucked away in a shadowy corner of the concessions kiosk, and the surrounding crowd has gradually thinned out as midnight grows nearer. 

It’s quiet now, no sound but their breathing, even the whirr of the popcorn machine silent. Or maybe Rey’s world has narrowed to the bubble of her and Ben and the packet of jogan fruit, still clutched in her hand. She sways forward unconsciously, the gap between them seeming like an endless chasm, and watches from outside her body as Ben’s hand comes up to take her own.

His thumb brushes over her knuckles, and her brain short-circuits. Jerking her hand back, she grabs her candy in both fists and nearly leaps backwards, unwilling to even contemplate the electricity that sparked from his fingers. 

This isn’t something that happens to people like her. She doesn’t meet handsome princes at the stroke of midnight, like some kind of modern day Cinderella, and she certainly doesn’t risk turning back into a pumpkin. Deliberately breaking eye contact, she casts her gaze outwards, searching desperately for anything she can use as an exit strategy. Poe, Finn and Rose are nowhere to be seen, but she catches sight of the time and realises that it’s past midnight and the film has already started. No wonder it got quiet so quickly.

“I hope you enjoy your showing, Your Grace,” she says, moving slowly out of his reach and gesturing towards the rest of the lobby, where the few remaining stragglers are making their way inside.

Should she bow? Curtsey? Everything piece of etiquette she’s ever learned has done an abrupt swan dive out of her brain, and she’s not even sure if she’s addressed him properly. Today has been a day of one offence after another, so she might as well add something else to the list. 

Ben’s voice is gentle, when he replies, and she doesn’t know if she’s imagining the discontent that shadows his brow or not. Surely she is. All she’s done is be rude to him, treating him like a servant and then laughing about him bringing his assistant to the midnight premiere when really, if she thinks about it, that’s surprisingly sweet. 

“Thank you, Miss....” he trails off, and she realises that she never told him her name. Not that he asked — he was too busy being smug and offended in equal measure. Technically, he didn’t even introduce himself.

“Oh! I’m Rey. Just Rey.”

She refuses to feel self-conscious about her lack of rank or title. If Ben wanted to be surrounded by silver spoons, he could have easily rented a screen and had a private showing. The fact that he didn’t must mean something.

“Thank you, Just Rey,” he says softly, and their eyes meet across the expanse of the lobby. She drifts, half wanting to go back, to say something, _anything_ , but what is there to say? 

She settles for smiling instead, pouring all her complicated feelings into it and hoping that he understands. It’s happiness and regret and bittersweet longing, all at once, and she’s so concentrated on his eyes on hers that she misses the lightning-quick flash of a camera, shining through the wide windows and vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Ben’s gaze snaps towards it like a dog catching a scent, but he wipes the frown from his face before it’s even fully formed, replacing it with the shit-eating grin that’s quickly became so familiar to her. He crosses the length of the lobby in four long strides until they’re once more standing close enough to reach out and touch the other with ease, and he meets her gaze head on. 

She opens her mouth — to say what, she’s not sure — but he interrupts her, turning and walking backwards into the corridor.

“Enjoy your showing,” he repeats, and Rey nods in reply. She moves to make her way to her own screen, sure she’s missed all of the trailers and probably, knowing her luck, the start of the film itself, when Ben’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Oh, and Rey? It’s not ‘Your Grace.’ It's ‘Your Royal Highness.’ Or just ‘Sir,’ if you prefer.”

She can hear the smile in his voice and doesn’t dignify him with a response beyond the flash of her middle finger, but her grin stays plastered to her face even as she navigates the crowded screening, squinting in the dim light to find Finn, Poe and Rose. They must think she’s abandoned them. 

When she eventually finds her seat, jostling her way past an entire row of preteen girls to make it to her friends, Rose acts like she’s been missing for weeks.

“Where _were_ you?” she hisses, disregarding the glare from their neighbour, an elderly man who’s the furthest thing imaginable from Galaxy Clash’s target audience.

Rey shushes her playfully, grabbing a fistful of popcorn from Rose’s bucket before peeling open her pack of jogan fruit and mixing the two together, deliberately ignoring Finn’s murmur of disgust. She dips one hand into the bag and grabs a sip of Poe’s drink with the other, and just as the lights lower completely and the title card comes up on screen, she leans into the centre of the row and whispers quietly to them.

“You’ll _never_ guess who I bumped into.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/reykyIos) and wish maria a happy birthday [here!](https://twitter.com/nestadarling)


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